Arts campers get a look at how Obtainium works

Or, there was no chocolate factory. Or Oompah Loompahs. But there was a boxer named Angie. And plenty of enthusiastic kids. Toss in O'Hare's wild and wacky creations at Obtainium Works and one could see the impishly bearded welding wizard stepping into his portable wooden playhouse and blasting toward the stars with kids waving from the balcony.

As Gene Wilder would sing, "Come with me ... and you'll be ... in a world of pure imagination ... take a look ... and you'll see into your imaginationnnnn ..."

"This is exactly the type of thing I wish I saw when I was their age," surveyed O'Hare as a handful of adolescents from the Vallejo Community Arts Foundation's Summer Arts Camp got the Obtainium Works tour in downtown Vallejo early Thursday.

The students, already armed with gourd horns and hula skirts via camp instructor Kemper Stone, strolled through the inner-workings of O'Hare's mind. Not an easy task but they were up for the challenge.

"It's sort of what I do at home. I take things and make them different things," said 13-year-old Jacob Carroll. "I took my bike and made it into a unicycle."

The lad wouldn't mind having the tree house (actually, no trees were killed during the making of this house ... it's all recycled) in his Vallejo backyard.

From the metal horse to huge tea pot to large dodo bird, it's all "great for kids to see stuff that they can make," said O'Hare's marital cohort, Kathy O'Hare.

Shannon O'Hare talks about getting away from making things with our own hands, his wife said, "so, for them, they can see stuff they can make, that you don't have to be that old to get involved in making crazy art."

O'Hare said her father built her a playhouse she used for many years until relocating. And then her dad built a three-story Barbie house.

"You see that you can make all sorts of great, cool stuff with whatever you can get your hands on," he said, observing that the arts campers "are doing it on their own or with this class. They're obviously showing

amazing creativity."

One doesn't, grinned O'Hare, need a "brainium" to create with Obtainium.

"I've operated without a 'brainium' for as long as I can remember," he said. "Creativity and tenacium are more important than brainium."